After 16 Days, a Cry From the Ruins: 'Sir, Please Help Me!'

Seamstress Is Pulled Out After 16 Days

A female garment worker has been found alive in the ruins of a building in Dhaka that collapsed 16 days ago. The collapse of the Rana Plaza has already claimed more than 1,000 lives.

By

Syed Zain Al-Mahmood

Updated May 10, 2013 7:54 p.m. ET

DHAKA, Bangladesh—When the walls crumbled around her into mountains of broken concrete and twisted steel, Reshma Akter Begum fell and fell and fell.

Where one second she had been on the third floor, she now found herself in a basement prayer room that would prove her sanctuary and her salvation.

Over the next 16 days and seven hours in the often sweltering, pitch-black room, three other people she had worked with in the eight-story factory building died one by one.

The dry snacks and bottled water she scavenged from their backpacks dwindled, she told rescuers. She forced a broken pipe through a crack in the ceiling for ventilation.

She could sometimes hear rescue workers outside, but her desperate attempts to make enough noise to attract their attention failed. "I kept banging whatever I could with my legs, but no one could hear me," she told Bangladeshi TV from her hospital bed.

Bangladeshi rescuers retrieve garment worker Reshma Begum from the rubble of a collapsed building on May 10. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

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On Friday, the death toll in one of the worst industrial accidents ever rose past 1,000. It had been two days since she had run out of food and water. She heard bulldozers above and started banging a pipe against the concrete. This time, someone heard.

Carried out on a stretcher in a rescue broadcast live on national television, Ms. Begum, a seamstress in her 20s and mother of a 5-year-old boy, was rushed to the hospital. Doctors said she was dehydrated but otherwise had no major injuries from being buried alive—one of the longest periods anyone has survived such an ordeal.

"We'd given up hope," Ayesha Begum, who identified herself as Reshma's sister, said in an interview at the hospital. "God has brought her back for the sake of her little son."

Ayesha said she and Reshma's aunt had been waiting outside the Rana Plaza, the clothes-making complex that collapsed, for two weeks, desperately praying that she'd be found alive.

Reshma came from the northern district of Dinajpur to the capital here four years ago to work in a garment factory so as to become more independent, her sister said. She said Reshma recently had separated from her husband and was working in the New Wave Bottoms factory.

The company is part of a group that counts Benetton SpA of Italy and Loblaw Cos. as customers.

The owners of the factory are now in jail, although no one has yet been formally charged. Attempts to reach them for comment in recent days have been unsuccessful.

ENLARGE

The crowds at the site had thinned in the past week. The most recent survivor had been found just four days after the April 24 collapse, but was killed by a fire set off inadvertently by rescuers who were trying to cut through to free her.

There have been complaints from victims' families over the pace of the rescue operations at the building, which housed five garment factories. Right after the disaster, the Bangladesh government turned down foreign offers of help, including from Britain and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, saying the country could handle the job itself.

Some relatives of those missing, angered by the lack of heavy equipment, had clashed with police at the site. Later, the army, which now is coordinating efforts, moved in with bulldozers and other machinery, prompting criticism that they were moving too quickly and possibly missing potential survivors.

Maj. Gen. Hasan Suhrawardy, who is leading the operation, said the pace would now slow again, since Ms. Begum's survival had raised hopes, however slight, that other survivors could be in the wreckage.

ENLARGE

Rescuers carry Reshma Akter Begum after pulling her Friday from the rubble of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, which collapsed on April 24.
European Pressphoto Agency

On Friday evening, families clutching photos of missing loved ones were once again thronging the area hoping to see their relatives brought out alive.

"God is merciful," said Afsar Ali, who said he was looking for his daughter. "We still have hope."

Ms. Begum told her rescuers that inside the Muslim prayer room where she landed, there was enough room to stand and move around, even though the ceiling had caved in.

Many times she heard voices, she told her rescuers, but her attempts to attract attention had failed.

On Friday, her luck changed.

"I heard the sound and rushed toward the spot," Abdur Razzaq, an army sergeant who was involved in the rescue, said in an interview. "I knelt down and heard a faint voice. 'Sir, please help me!' she cried."

As she was lifted from the rubble, crowds that had gathered broke into cheers of "God is great!" Rescue workers wiped away tears.

"It's a miraculous event," Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said after visiting Ms. Begum in the hospital and congratulating the rescue teams.

Ms. Begum had been trapped in a space originally around 30 feet long and 15 feet wide, according to rescue workers, during one of the hottest times of the year, with outside temperatures reaching 95 degrees and 80% humidity.

Her hair and face were covered in dirt as she was carried out on a stretcher, her bright pink dupatta, or scarf, wrapped demurely over her neck and chest in the traditional Bangladeshi Muslim manner.

Her scalp showed where she had apparently lost big clumps of hair, which experts said could have been stress-related.

Bulldozers stopped plowing the debris for a few hours after Ms. Begum was discovered, then gingerly resumed operations under flashlights.

Briefing reporters at the site, Gen. Suhrawardy said: "Reshma is totally OK. She worked hard to keep herself alive. That is a very strong woman."

The entire tragedy has shocked Bangladesh and the world, putting pressure on the government and foreign brands to improve safety conditions in the country's 5,000 factories.

Bangladesh is one of the world's largest producers of garments, supplying major U.S. and European retailers. The industry produces some of the world's cheapest clothes, paying workers monthly wages as low as $40—a quarter those of China's.

The government this week has begun an inspection of the country's factories. On Wednesday, the government forced 18 factories to shut while they carried out safety improvements, including three owned by the country's largest exporter of garments.

There have been few instances of people surviving longer than 10 days after disasters like earthquakes, according to academic studies. In 2010, after the Haiti earthquake, a teenage girl was rescued 15 days after the disaster.

The United Nations, which coordinates disaster relief, normally calls off search and rescue operations after a week or so and shifts to tending to survivors.

The death toll at Rana Plaza has jumped by about 100 each day for the past week, as salvage workers combed through the ground floor and basement levels. On Friday, it rose to 1,050.

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